Dead Hours

 I woke up to notifications. My sister is one of those people who doesn't send messages in one go. Instead, each sentence arrives in strokes. That morning, nine rings anticipated one voice message. My sister always embraced redundancy.

The voice message was a guilt trip about how our aunt could no longer take care of our father. The poor thing is confused and unable to live anywhere other than his beloved beach house. The message went on to remind me that I had been away from our family for the last 15 years and hadn't set foot in our hometown for the last 8 years. She said she was tired of caring for Dad.

I called her to set things straight, although I don’t feel like confronting anyone (or anything) in the past decade, much less my sister. I said I was surprised she endured 2 whole months caring for him without calling me, to which she replied with her usual offended tone. Tears followed to incite more guilt in me. I tried her game and started describing my depressive years. It was futile, nobody else’s pain is as hurtful as my sister’s. She doubled down on the poison by saying, “You changed after you met that Professor guy…”. I interrupted her and said, “If you ever mention him again, I will let you rotten together with our father in that fucking Beach house.” She kept on crying, to which I added, “You can shove the tears up your ass, Núbia.”

I obviously hung up. I know myself well enough to admit that I wouldn’t be capable of ignoring them. I also know myself sufficiently to recognize that I am a passive creature, except when they criticize you. I know we broke up 4 years ago. This is an understatement. You left me because I was dragging a depression for over 4 years, unable to get myself out of it. According to you, I was unwilling to do so. You are always right, and although I have no self-esteem left, I would never spoil your life by forcing you to stay.

I almost took my life when you left me. I still remember the amount of pills I swallowed (just in case I wanted to try it again). Don’t worry; I am nowhere close to doing it today. But I am about to take 2 pills because I agreed with Nubia that I will be coming to Bahia. I will do it; I just don’t want to live the journey; I have to follow my life, and it is enough hurt. So, please allow me to write you. I beg you not to answer; I couldn’t handle your eloquence questioning my plans. I just need to have a recipient. Let’s be honest; you were very good at ignoring my emails in the past.

I can't write any further. I need to put things into motion, and it drains me from all my energy. I will continue from the airport or airplane.

--

I am at the airport waiting for leg n. 2 out of 5. Yes, not having you leaves me in poverty; a relative one, of course. I feel miserable, yet poor is enough humiliation. I barely survive. I live for and from the freelance editing and copywriting gigs I get. I became addicted to the notifications of the apps; I need the subsistence. Last night I translated medication info sheets; boring as hell. I am a nuisance; I am sorry, my friend (can I still call you my friend?). I am so annoying I can only barely stand my own company.

I am tired of it all. Why can’t I kill myself? Why is life so stubborn and designed to linger on? I don’t want to persist; I want to exist.

--

I arrived at my sister's empty flat for a temporary stay. Her family moved South recently, and the flat is already empty. My sister left a mattress in the guest room. I dragged it to the balcony and used it to soothe my jet lag. The idea of meeting her was daunting.

My sister, Núbia, is 6 years older than me. I used to blame the age gap for the abyss between us. She is vapid, attracted to shiny new things and men with thick wallets. I am interested in deep conversations, and attracted to old stuff and men with large egos. Somewhere between large personalities and money, my sister's and mine’s tastes for men should overlap.

Núbia returned to Bahia to close some businesses, our father included; she wanted to transfer it to me. I agreed to keep him for a month at his beloved beach house, giving Núbia and me time to search for a permanent solution. My sister insisted Dad was calm when staying in that house, the opposite of his behavior if placed anywhere else. She promised I would be able to work and would have the help of Lady Nilza.

Lady Nilza was the only support I got when growing up. She worked with my parents since I was a baby until I was 20. I never heard why Nilza left. I was as sad when she left 20 years ago as I am glad today when I heard she is returning. I call her Lady because I’ve never met anyone more noble or deserving of deference than her.

Me, my sister, and Lady Nilza set up the house. My sister's last trial of guilt-tripping me was a series of platitudes: he is my father regardless of his beliefs (and I shouldn’t impose my beliefs on others), he is old, weak, and financially broke, he has no one in his life after mom died. The list went on, with reminders of my absence sprinkled on top. Lady Nilza was listening and, as usual, said nothing.

Indeed, his disease is fucked up. It has daily cycles: lethargy in the mornings (can barely walk; moves like a sloth), slowly waking up in the afternoons' (can move but can’t have a conversation), and an unbearable period of logorrhea (monologues of compulsive storytelling; it gives me the impression he wants to speak to compensate everything he wanted to but couldn’t say earlier in the day). Without drugging him, I think he would speak the night away. He becomes unbearable.

--

Life is not so bad here. I still see myself as a miserable guy. But the purpose of a new routine gives some comfort. Still, when Lady Nilza leaves, I am left alone in his presence. The end of the afternoon brings his voice back, and I must endure the endless retelling of stories. I wish I could say this journey is making me feel healthier. For sure, it is not making me feel a better person; I wish him to die. Mainly because I don’t know what to do with the long periods of dead hours. For him, they come in the shape of his lifeless mornings and sluggish afternoons. For me, the dead hours start when my father is able to talk and use his words to colonize my time.

My existence here is designed to avoid this idle time; I am a machine who cannot be turned off or it won’t ignite again. I keep busy, but the time dies when you cross the gates of this house; how has my father accomplished that?

I wake up at 06:00 and run to the Beach. The sun and saltpeter are omnipresent. I had forgotten how much I loved the smell of salt. I never lived away from the coast. I start by walking on the sand with my coffee cup. The Beach itself has a name, Busca Vida, and I start my walk like this was my goal: Life Searching. When I finish the coffee, I drop the cup behind a coconut tree and start running; I run until I can’t stand anymore, then I stop and return to walking. I repeat this like a medication.

When I return home, I check on him, who is still going under the effects of the sleeping pills I give him at 9 o’clock. I can’t stand the time with him. I let him sit on his pee and occasional feces until Lady Nilza arrives. I don’t mind cleaning him; I just can’t accept the idea of doing nice things to him. And I can hear you thinking, “How bad could your dad have been? Isn’t him your dad after all?”

I have the mornings to myself until Lady Nilza arrives around 10. I let her settle him in his chair and change his diapers. I work a bit before I prepare us some food. After lunch I have my coffee and my cigarette in the hammock and resume working. After Nilza leaves at 19:00, my day becomes his.

I avoided talking to him, changing the subject to trivial topics to prevent him from traveling back in time. Three instances of his “traveling” back in time were particularly disturbing.

1-     “Go on, Lilo. Go on. Auntie Dalila will take care of you.” He repeated this sentence many times in the past week, but I can’t explain why. I can barely remember Aunt Dalila, but I can recollect the cookies and cakes she would offer me in her kitchen while Dad was busy doing something else; I was 5 or 6 maybe. It was never for too long, but Dad would return to pick me up before saying thank you to Dalila. Once, I asked if she was his sister, and he replied, “No, she is my cousin. Don’t tell your mother we were here; she will be mad if she finds out I gave you sweets.”

Today is the first time he has repeated an episode two days in a row. “Go on, Lilo. Go on. Auntie Dalila will take care of you.” I tried my luck and asked him what he did with Auntie. He smiled and brought his hands to his nose, forming a triangle to hide his mouth.

2-     “Where is your mother? Shall we have some ice cream together?” this sentence brought me to my knees. I never told him, but this is my most beautiful memory with him. We went together, the two of us, to have ice cream. He also gave me popcorn and cotton candy (which normally was for sissy boys). We walked on the Beach, and he even hugged me. For the first time since the beginning of this melodrama, I excused myself to cry. I didn’t know I missed that so much until this point. This memory he never repeated again.

3-     “Did you know that your cousin Felipe is a faggot? Shamelessly parading his black boyfriend at family parties? Talking about adding hurt to injury.” In moments like this, which were most of them, he showed his true colors. I have nothing to add, only that I was 14 when he told me that.

Do you want to know the question popping into my mind continuously? If he has so many outbursts of lucidity, how am I sure he is not lying when behaving nonsensically? The official explanation is that his disease is shattering his mind. But I refuse to believe in it. Not even the proximity to the end makes me see this man under different colors.

Nilza and I have been talking about what we want to do. The conversation started with me asking her availability to continue caring for him. I mentioned that Núbia could be right and that it was my duty to care for my dying father. Going away would cause too much guilt, and the lack of resources didn’t give me a lot of options of where to place him.

Lady Nilza looked deeply into my eyes and said, “I think there is a lot you never knew or decided to forget.”

--

I stopped writing about two months ago. Remember when I agreed to stay for only one month? Lady Nilza and I found a balance in our daily routines. My sister pays her salary, and I give her a supplement while also paying for someone else to clean and cook for us. My sister is so happy about this that she has already announced that she will be using the Christmas holidays to travel with her family.

This is month number 3 of my current adventure. At first, I was ready to return to Hamburg and drown myself in self-commiseration. But as a friend wisely put it: “If you are going to be depressed, why not in the tropics with good weather?” Remember that day? When you said this to me? You clearly wanted to get rid of me, “why don’t you go stay with your family?” once again, my friend, you were right. It would have been better, but not for the reasons you, and the rest of the world, think.

Being here gave me, indeed, a sense of purpose: my father. And while I wish I could join the choir of selflessness, this is not me.

Lady Nilza took the three instances of time traveling I wrote earlier and, as classy as she was, shattered all my illusions,

“1- Your Auntie Dalila was the sister of your father’s mistress. Whenever he wanted to fuck the mistress, he would drop you in the living room with the auntie while he did his business next door.

2- Your father only took you out the days after he drank a bottle of whiskey and beat the hell out of your mother. That is why she never went along; she was bruised from head to toe.

3- You were not 14 when your father told you that. You were 10. And he repeated that whenever he had an opportunity. It is a miracle he doesn’t repeat it more often now that he is demented.”

I had doubts about how to proceed. What to do. I was taken over by anger. And Lady Nilza was smart as she was sharp. She told me that at 18:30, right before she was going to leave for the night. She told me that in front of my father, who was lucid enough at that moment to have understood it. She was clever because she calibrated her tale to coincide with leaving me alone with Dad and my anger.

I decided to drain him of any pleasure beyond his basic needs. He asked for food, water, and the TV show he watched every day religiously; I ignored him. He was a vulnerable old man. However, I was once a vulnerable young child; it didn’t stop his cruelty. And while he was trying to scream with his faint voice, I kept looking at him motionlessly. He got dinner after he complied. “If you behave, you get what you want. Do you understand me?” I started giving an extra half of the sleeping pill.

People say that cases like this require a routine. That the demented brain cannot cope with change. Guess what I did? Nothing was ever the same, from going to bed at 19:00 or at 23:00, when I forced him to stay awake… just to see how his brain reacted under fatigue. But I needed mine in order to make ends meet. During the day, I left the torture to Lady Nilza (believe me, she was far more sophisticated in her means). Why is she so invested in this story, you might ask. Maybe she loved me like a son. No… Nilza and I are not that tacky. She explained it herself to my dad,

“Good morning, Sir. Do you remember my name? No? Not even the evenings you went into my room and forced yourself on me while whispering to me not to scream or the children would wake up? You don’t remember, do you?”

See? But I can imagine you are wondering why I am writing you this letter? Well, I guess I owe it to you to provide some follow-up on my mental health. For the first time in my life, I feel good with -  and about - myself. I will stop now; I will have to care for Papa.

--

My dear friend, the fun ended earlier than expected. I am assuming one doesn’t want to keep on living if one doesn’t have a bunch of slaves catering to their needs every day. Three months after my previous segment, Dad died in his sleep. He was actually choking on his own saliva, and I stayed next to him, seeing his stretched arms turning blue. I said nothing because nothing was necessary; my eyes said loudly, “There isn’t enough suffering in the world to make you pay, anyway,” something like this; I am paraphrasing.

I decided to remain in the house, and to keep on paying Lady Nilza, this time to cook and clean. Actually, to be my family. Between my walks and my work, I have enough entertainment in this corner of the world. But I can imagine you are thinking, “Why is he telling me this?” Well, my friend. It turns out that I was indeed still depressed when I started typing this story and that being here got me out of that miserable mood. But it made me realize also that you were not very nice to me in the past. I kept thinking about your tears when you told me you were leaving me. Part of me wants to tell you the same I told my sister’s crocodile tears.

Yet another part of me wants to visit you. Will you allow me to take care of you?